Gary Paulsen was born May 17, 1939 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is one of America's most popular writers for young people. Gary ran away from home at age 14. He acquired a taste for adventure, which has provided great material that he has used to create his powerful stories. The popular Brian books are all based on real events that occurred in his life.

"He was sitting in a bush plane roaring seven thousand feet above the northern wilderness with a pilot who had suffered a massive heart attack and who was either dead or in something close to a coma. He was alone" (Paulsen 12). In the book Hatchet Brian goes through a horrible event in which the pilot suffers a heart attack. This left Brian to fly and crash the plane into a lake, where he then swims ashore to save himself. When Gary was a volunteer rescue worker he saw a man die of a heart attack right in front of his eyes.

Gary Paulsen, the American author of Hatchet, as w...

English: Random House Tower

Gary Paulsen

He used this for the pilot's death. Traveling by boat to the Philippines he witnessed a plane crash into the water. He was also involved in two plane misshapes as a passenger in the Canadian wilderness, which were all used in the writing of the plane crash in Hatchet.

"...he saw a brown wall of fur detach itself from the forest to his rear and come down on him like a run away truck. He just had time to see it was a moose...when it hit him" (Paulsen 30). Gary hasn't had the greatest luck with mosses. He has been attacked many times. When Gary was twelve, he had a near miss while hunting. While living in Minnesota, a moose went into their dog kennel and attacked his dogs. Another instance is when Gary...

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